Nation's potholes need a big fix

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The financing fiasco has been well-known for years — in fact, the last transportation bill, enacted in 2005, ordered up a blue-ribbon commission tasked with studying the financing problem and making recommendations for how to fix it.

The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission’s final report, issued in January 2008, a year before the last transportation bill was to expire, recommended that the country needs to be investing at least $225 billion annually from “all sources” for the next 50 years in order to upgrade infrastructure to a state of good repair and make transportation advances.

The Senate’s current transportation bill, in comparison, would fund highways and transit at $109 billion over two years.

The study also recommended, among other things, that the gasoline tax be raised between five to eight cents per gallon over the next five years, and then index it to inflation.

Basso agreed that the issue is far from new. He noted that in 2006, a year after the last transportation bill was enacted, Congress held a hearing related to the financing issue.

“The specter of this revenue problem started to surface and the question put before the Congressional Budget Office was, ‘How did we get into this situation, why didn’t we know about this?’” Basso said. “CBO looked up and — I remember, this was just comical — pretty much said, ‘Oh, we told you this back when you passed the bill,’ and that was the end of the discussion.

“So I guess the answer was, back when they passed the bill, nobody really wanted to deal with that or the assumption was that would get fixed later.”

But so far, it hasn’t been fixed. Lawmakers have only managed to punt, and there’s little reason to think that a viable long-term financing solution is achievable in 15 months or less.

The basic problem confronting policymakers is that the fund that fuels federal transportation programs — called the Highway Trust Fund, which is fueled by gas tax revenues — isn’t taking in enough money to keep up with needs.

That’s forced Congress to transfer billions of dollars into the Highway Trust Fund from general revenues in order to limp along to the current moment in time. This Band-Aid approach is only expected to carry the country through some point in fiscal 2013 before the fund will again start experiencing a shortfall.

"...and in this era of fiscal austerity it may be a long time before they get rebuilt."

We are in an era of fiscal austerity? The largest economy in the world spending $1.40 for every $1 it brings in qualifies as austerity?

"...to address the deep shortfalls in gasoline tax revenues that fuel the system"

So not having high enough tax revenue is always the problem, huh? It's never about the spending? How about we cut through all the inefficiencies layered on by unions and state bureaucracies and just pay people to fix roads.

We should bid these fixes out to the private sector which A) creates actual jobs and B) gets things done 10 times faster. Every wonder why it takes a city 10 years to build a single interchange, yet 30 miles of state-of-the-art toll road can be done in 2 years? Private sector vs public.

"...and in this era of fiscal austerity it may be a long time before they get rebuilt."

We are in an era of fiscal austerity? The largest economy in the world spending $1.40 for every $1 it brings in qualifies as austerity?

"...to address the deep shortfalls in gasoline tax revenues that fuel the system"

So not having high enough tax revenue is always the problem, huh? It's never about the spending? How about we cut through all the inefficiencies layered on by unions and state bureaucracies and just pay people to fix roads.

We should bid these fixes out to the private sector which A) creates actual jobs and B) gets things done 10 times faster. Every wonder why it takes a city 10 years to build a single interchange, yet 30 miles of state-of-the-art toll road can be done in 2 years? Private sector vs public.

We do not need the private sector to rip us off repairing roads. Our government built the freeway system, US highways, Hoover dam, etc. etc. Once streamlined, they can do a better job without cost plus add-ons.

Meanwhile the RepubLick party doesn't want to pay taxes for road repairs. I just spent $700 fixing my car after driving over an unlit pothole. I'd rather pay a few hundred bucks more in taxes, thank you very much.

Lets take the millions on welfare and put them to work on the highways so they can EARN their benefits! Like during the depression!While in China I witnessed the poor cleaning around the towns ,planting flowers and working on the highways in exchange for meals and board!

I have three comments. First, aid, Federal aid, for anything means the money goes from here to Washington, 15% to 20% gets taken off the top (administrative and indirect) and the remaining 80 to 85cents on a dollar comes back with someone at a distance telling you how to spend your own money. Wouldn't it be better to leave it here and let us decide what, if anything, should be done?

Second, how much of the Federal "trust" fund has been transferred to other things like high speed rail and alternate energy boondoggles? Anybody remember Solyndra and the Volt?

Third, Pigeonca, many of those things you mentioned were designed under A/E contracts, some by government agencies like the Bureau of Reclamation and Corps of Engineers and built by contractors. Most were financed by taxes, Federal State and local. Some, I've been on a few, are just too big for private enterprise, at least private enterprise under the controls now used by government.

I thought that's what all that TARP money was for, "Shovel ready jobs". Oh, that's right, Obama admitted he lied and that there was no such thing as a "shovel ready job". It all went to his 1% buddies at Goldman Sachs.

Lets take the millions on welfare and put them to work on the highways so they can EARN their benefits! Like during the depression!While in China I witnessed the poor cleaning around the towns ,planting flowers and working on the highways in exchange for meals and board!

Are you seriously suggesting forcing 75-year olds and people with severe disabilities to work on the roads? Because when we talk about people on welfare, that's really who we're talking about. TANF recipients make up only a very small portion of people receiving social security benefits, and about 92% of those people are actually working, just not making enough income to support themselves.

Simple: declare war on potholes and set the Defense Dept on them. It may take time to figure out that star-wars missals don't work (they don't for any reason) but ultimately we'll have a huge budget and lots of lobbyists focused on the "enemy" -- and a good 10 years to go without stopping.

The FHTF alone brings in about $32 billion per year. A third of that money pays for things that have nothing to do with building or maintaining roads. If all levels of Government dedicated gas and diesel taxes to the maintainence and construction of roads, as the shoud, we would not have the issues we have today with our roads.

Fuel tax increases are a "non-starter" because people, like me, will demand an accounting of what our fuel tax money has been spent on in the past. when those details come out, there will be outrage. The politicians don't want you to know the truth.

GAS TAXES are being ripped off to pay for other stupidities like SOLYNDRA, buying votes, vacationing and the cost of campaigning We can't fix roads because we have to pay for a flight to HOLLYWOOD to play hoops with Clooney and pick up campaign money! What do you want Roads or corruption?

Hey Romney, La Hood is another dumpee to get rid of. Obama is surrounded with incompetents to make his own inabilities look better! He sells legislation for campaign promises and votes. Was Clooney promised a new road from his home to the Movies? And, where is our media? Can't they see the waste, fraud and abuse? Can't they question where the money goes? Who pays for all these jaunts to collect money from special interests?

The interim solution is simple. Current Federal gas tax money is slated to put 25% of that revenue into repairs and 75% into new projects.

Simply flip that to 75% repair and 25% new Projects. That doesn't increase taxes in a downturn, it increase the "shovel ready" jobs. And quite frankly the percentages should be flipped anyway. As more projects have been built over the decades, the annual costs of maintenance continue to rise, and any return on investment in more infrastructure continues to decrease.